Talent Gaps Seen as Potential Growth and Performance Inhibitors

Posted By: Joseph Daniel McCool
Filed Under: joseph daniel mccool, talent management

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A Harvard Business Review article cites a lack of talent on a company's management bench as one of the four primary causes of business growth stalls, with one of the root causes found in management development programs that focus only on replicating current leaders' skills.

More recently, a study conducted by the Corporate Executive Board reveals that 25 percent of employer-identified, high-potential employees plan to leave their current companies within the year, compared to only 10 percent in 2006.

"Organizations are at a real risk of losing their most talented employees as disengagement levels increase, the economy recovers, and the labor market warms up," says Conrad Schmidt, executive director and chief research officer of CEB's Corporate Leadership Council. "It is paramount that companies act now, not only to re-engage and retain high-potential employees, but to re-evaluate and shore-up their succession plans and preserve leadership development within their organizations."

To me, what all this suggests is that companies better quickly get a handle on the following:

Do we know who are best leaders are internally? Do we have a plan for identifying and connecting with the best external talent for critical roles?
Can we get our disengaged, high-potential leaders re-engaged? How much effort should we invest in that effort?
And finally, are we actively linking leaders' interests with organizational needs? To what extent is that reducing the risk and cost of turnover and management succession?

If your organization isn't asking these questions, the writing may already be on the wall.

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Joseph Daniel McCool's avatar Joseph Daniel McCool
Joseph Daniel McCool is senior contributing editor with ExecuNet and principal of management recruiting/succession advisory firm The McCool Group. He is also the author of Deciding Who Leads: How Executive Recruiters Drive, Direct & Disrupt the Global Search for Leadership Talent, recognized widely as "one of the best business books of 2008," and its Brazilian Portuguese translation, Escolhendo Líderes, published in June 2010.